Michael King, OBE (15 December 1945 – 30 March 2004) was a New Zealand popular historian, author and biographer. He wrote or edited over 30 books on New Zealand topics, including The Penguin History of New Zealand, which was the most popular New Zealand book of 2004.[1]

King earned degrees in history at Victoria, (BA 1967) and the University of Waikato (MA 1968), and gained his PhD at Waikato (1978). In 1997 he received an honorary DLitt at Victoria. He was Visiting Professor of New Zealand Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and taught or held fellowships at six other universities.

Although not Māori himself,[2] King was well known for his knowledge of Māori culture and history. New Zealand Listener, one of New Zealand's most popular weekly magazines, dubbed King "the people's historian"[3] for his efforts to write about and for the local populace. As a biographer, King published works on Te Puea Herangi, Whina Cooper, Frank Sargeson (1995) and Janet Frame (2000). As an historian, King's works include Being Pākehā (1985), Moriori (1989), and The Penguin History of New Zealand (July 2003), the latter of which was, by February 2004, into its seventh edition. In all, King wrote, co-wrote and edited more than 30 books on a diverse range of New Zealand topics. He contributed to all five volumes of the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography.

King was always sensitive to the fact that he was a Pākehā writing about the Maori world and always sought to establish close personal relationships with those he wrote about and their whanau, hapu and iwi authorities. He believed that all Pākehā had the same right to be called indigenous as Maori and disagreed with claims that only Māori have a spiritual association with mountains, lakes and rivers. He noted a recent tendency in literature to romanticise Maori life and also pointed out that Maori cruelty in the pre-European era was far harsher and less humane than the results of British colonisation.[4]

King was a diabetic and had post-polio syndrome. He received six weeks of chemotherapy and radiotherapy for throat cancer discovered in October 2003, which was in remission by 2004. In 1984 he was living with his family in a commune. His wife Ros decided to live with someone else and eventually married them.[5]

Following King's death, an essay on John Money was posthumously published in an exhibition catalogue for the Eastern Southland Gallery, located in the provincial town of Gore, New Zealand. King had planned to write a full biography on Money, but had lacked funding to do so in his lifetime.

He has two children, the filmmaker Jonathan King and novelist Rachael King.

King and his second wife, Maria Jungowska, were killed when their car crashed into a tree and caught fire near Maramarua, on State Highway 2 in the north Waikato. The cause of the crash was reported by the police at the time to be a complete mystery since speed was not a factor and investigators have little idea why the car would veer off a straight road.

A coroner's inquest into the deaths determined that the accident was most likely caused by driver inattention.[6]